Investing In The Wake Of Nationalization

[girl gone mad]

Investing In The Wake Of Nationalization
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29303773

Anxiety about the state of our banking system has sent investors scrambling every which way. But this decline in stocks may be different.

"The stock market wants to know what’s going on with the banks and it appears it’s willing to go as low as it has to go to get an answer," explains Dylan Ratigan.

Although the White House says they strongly believe a privately held banking system is the way to go -- investors don't buy it, entirely. It's true the comments helped lift the Dow and S&P off their lows, but investors still clobbered shares of Bank of America and Citigroup; in fact this is the sixth day in a row that investors have pummeled these stocks.

"It's a clear sign that the markets are expecting a high probability of them being nationalized," says Mike Holland, founder of Holland & Co. "The clear expectation is that shareholders would effectively be wiped out."

The current situation is somewhat bleak for both Citi and BofA. Both stocks have lost more than 90 percent of their value in the last year. And each bank has received $45 billion in government aid in recent months; the aid exceeds the banks' current market value.

Although both Dems and the GOP say they hesitate to nationalize, support for the plan seems to be growing. Even Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, considered one of the more conservative members of the Senate, said nationalization could be an option.

Yves Smith, editor of The Naked Capitalism blog, thinks it's just a matter of semantics and that nationalization is nothing new. "We already do nationalization in this country. It's called the FDIC resolving banks," she says on Fast Money.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29303773">More... (video available at link).